How do I get personal movies onto my iPad without using iTunes

Goodreader is a "reader" app that allows you to copy media and watch them on the iPad - however, it will take some time to get a movie on.

You might want an external device like a GoFlex Satellite - which allows you to store media, and then wirelessly connect it to your iPad and view. I think it's something like 300 GB.

What format are the movies?

iPad Supported Video Formats & Movie Formats

• H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;
• MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;
• Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

You can use a USB flash drive & the camera connection kit. I've done this with a .mov made with iMovie.

Plug the USB flash drive into your computer & create a new folder titled DCIM. Then put your movie/photo files into the folder. The files must have a filename with exactly 8 characters long (no spaces) plus the file extension (i.e., my-movie.mov).

Now plug the flash drive into the iPad using the camera connection kit. Open the Photos app, the movie/photo files should appear & you can import.

 Cheers, Tom 😉

You can set the DropBox app to use full quality, it's not going to transcode video on the fly. I know there has been some issues with photos in the past, but video requires so much reprocessing, they just aren't going to do that.

Within the DropBox iPad app, you can 'STAR' files, video files, favoriting them. These are downloaded and cached locally in your device for viewing even when you don't have internet connectivity. I use this for my high quality personal videos. =)

I use YouTube for hte others. You can upload to YouTube in HD quality, and set them to private if you like.

and you can't save Dropbox video to the iPad's HD.

Are you sure? I save files to my iPad with DB all the time.

in addition to this, you can use the camera connection kit and put the videos on a SD card, using the naming format described and then import them into the iPad as needed.

One advantage of an SD card over the USB, not all USB's work. Ones with propriatary software on them(kingston, sandisk) register as needing too much power (if you format them to take that off theymay be okay), but also some USB's with larger LED lights trigger the 'too much power', so it's a trial and error to find a usb drive that works but the SD will work every time.

You can usually overcome the power issue with a self-powered USB hub between the iPad and the USB device.

If you don't like the d.b. approach, there is an app called photosync. Load it on each of the devices, and you can move pics and videos from one to another. I have never tried a long video, but it works fine for my kids stuff. Runs over your existing wifi network. There is also a client for the desktop if want to park a copy there as well.

Thanks making a favorite in Dropbox worked! I couldn't figure out why the "download" icon in dropbox didn't allow me to save the video onto my camera stream. If I made the file a "favorite" first then I can download.

Background: You can transfer photos and movies made from your camera on and SD card directly into your iPad using an Apple Lightning SD Card Camera Reader. So all you have to do is convince your iPad that the SD card with your other movies (ripped DVDs etc) came from your camera.

1. Your movies need to be in a format your iPad will read - .mp4 or .mov work well. For DVDs, you need to rip it into .mp4 files - I use Xilisoft DVD to iPad Converter which works well. Store these files someplace convenient on your hard drive.

2. Format your SD card folder structure so that to your iPad, it looks like it came straight out of your digital camera. The easiest way to do this, is to format the SD card in your camera and then take a single photo on the card.

3. Attach you SD card to your computer (via a direct SD slot or a USB adaptor) and navigate through the SD card's folder structure to find the photo to took on your camera.

4. Copy all the video files that you want to watch on your iPad to the SAME location as the photo file.

5. Eject the SD card and insert it into your Apple Lightning SD Card Camera Reader and it into your iPad.

6. Go to the "Photos" icon app (not the Videos icon app) and follow the usual transfer instructions from the iOS.

Note that unlike movies in the Videos app from iTunes, the video files loaded this way appear only as a video icon with the time length of the file. ie No files names are visible, therefore you may need to write a short note identifying each file name according to its play time.

UPDATED

Background: You can transfer photos and movies made on your camera and recorded to an SD card directly into your iPad using an Apple Lightning SD Card Camera Reader. So all you have to do is convince your iPad that the SD card with your other movies (ripped DVDs etc) came from your camera.

1. Your movies need to be in a format your iPad will read - .mp4 or .mov work well. For DVDs, you need to rip it into .mp4 files - I use Xilisoft DVD to iPad Converter which works well.

2. Store these files someplace convenient on your hard drive.

3. Rename the .mp4 files so they have EXACTLY 8 characters in the file name without any spaces (digital cameras create 8 digit file names).

4. Format your SD card folder structure so that to your iPad, it looks like it came straight out of your digital camera. The easiest way to do this, is to format the SD card in your camera and then take a single photo on the card.

5. Attach you SD card to your computer (via a direct SD slot or a USB adaptor) and navigate through the SD card's folder structure to find the photo to took on your camera.

6. Copy all the video files that you want to watch on your iPad to the SAME location as the photo file.

7. Eject the SD card and insert it into your Apple Lightning SD Card Camera Reader and it into your iPad.

8. Go to the "Photos" icon app (not the Videos icon app) and follow the usual transfer instructions from the iOS.

Note that unlike movies in the Videos app from iTunes, the video files loaded this way appear only as a video icon with the time length of the file. ie No files names are visible, therefore you may need to write a short note identifying each file name according to its play time.

I do a lot of movies using iMovie on my iPad and the easiest way to get the movies on there is using iTunes. There are some complications though so I made a video, see here

https://youtu.be/FxGoXXrZXhg

If you don't want to use iTunes, you may try to use Dropbox to transfer videos from PC to iPad.

Firstly, you must install Dropbox on both computer and iPad. And you must log in the same account. Then drag the videos to the Dropbox on computer, then go to iPad and open Dropbox to sync the data from the Dropox on computer. But make sure you have wi-fi to help you do that. This way can be slow if you don't have network.

Alternatively, you could use a program similar to iPad Transfer to do that. So you can copy files directly into iPad and without any data lost.

OR if you don't want any additional software and want to go via the Internet, you could just use the upload option via the iCloud.com web page on your PC, with the iCloud Photo Library option turned on on the ipad. The trouble is with using this or Dropbox is that they all rely on uploading large files to the internet servers, which is going to be slow (very). The vastly faster method, especially for multiple large videos, is to use iTunes (photos - sync - include videos), as detailed in that youtube link I posted.